The federal government has announced its Industry Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda this afternoon, including plans for five non-profit “industry growth centres” to be rolled out early next year.

As expected, five areas of competitive strength were identified in the announcement. These were food and agribusiness; advanced manufacturing; mining equipment, technology and services; oil, gas and energy resources; and medical technologies and pharmaceuticals.

The centres will be industry-led and focussed on exploiting international markets and supply chains, and commercialising new products.

The centres would each get up to $3.5 million in funding annually, and would have to formulate a plan to be self-sustaining after four years.

The Australian Industry Group welcomed the announcement, and stressed that the centres needed to be industry and not research-driven, as well as possess a clear purpose.

"The Government has recognised the need for a practical focus on commercialisation of research," said the Ai Group's chief executive Innes Willox said.

"There should be a focus on the outcomes of the network, rather than creation of a network per se.

"This could be enhanced with a program designed to encourage the participation of small businesses and start-ups, and the creation of ‘linking organisations’ to facilitate the creation of partnerships between research organisations and industry."

Industry minister Ian Macfarlane said expressions of interest from business-led consortia to establish five of these centres would be sought.

Mikey MikeThis is well overdue but one of the unseen issues relates to product coming in to the country consumer direct, that is, not represented by an importer or distributor. I am aware of a situation where...

Stuart21 Best thing that could be done to help Australian manufacturers (particularly those that are inventors) would be to adopt a patent system that accords with the UNDHR; e.g. the 'One Dollar Patent' at...

Md. MoniruzzamanClean energy: Unlimited source of energy ocean tide can take a big role.
Considering the open space available in the ocean, and the tremendous amount of energy it produces, wave power could be a...

Error: (#10) This endpoint requires the 'manage_pages' or 'pages_read_engagement' permission or the 'Page Public Content Access' feature. Refer to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/review/login-permissions#manage-pages and https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/review/feature#reference-PAGES_ACCESS for details.Type: OAuthExceptionCode: 10Please refer to our Error Message Reference.

For over 55 years, Manufacturers’ Monthly has lead and informed Australia’s manufacturing industries with its highly credible editorial environment and its acclaimed analysis of issues affecting manufacturing